


a fact easily forgotten (we named our crowns ourselves)

by californianNostalgia



Series: the grace of gods is a grace that comes by violence [2]
Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Incest, Male Victim of Rape, Multi, Patricide, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Unhealthy Relationships, War, please read the tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 00:29:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21090359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/californianNostalgia/pseuds/californianNostalgia
Summary: Ancient Greeks considered their children of age when they turned sixteen.Upon reaching adulthood, Zeus ventured to Mount Othrys to rescue his siblings from their father. The subsequent war lasted eleven years, at the end of which the victors built a palace and declared themselves Olympians.(A Truly Terrible Guide to Surviving Trauma and Adjusting to a Position of Authority, co-authored by Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus.)





	a fact easily forgotten (we named our crowns ourselves)

**Author's Note:**

> _What if this storm ends?_   
_And I don't see you_   
_As you are now_   
_Ever again_
> 
> _A perfect halo_   
_Of gold hair and lightning_   
_Sets you off against_   
_The planet's last dance_
> 
> [Snow Patrol - The Lightning Strike (What If This Storm Ends?)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0BDS0-ZwOw)

Hestia remembers Kronos.

It would be impossible not to remember him. Twenty years she lived inside his stomach, and eleven years she waged war against him. But the pain and the terror is not all that she remembers about him.

Here is a fact easily forgotten. Kronos did not swallow his firstborn immediately.

Hestia still remembers the day Rhea nudged them outside, father and newborn. Immortal children are born walking, but Kronos offered to hold her hand. They found themselves a shady spot at the edge of an overgrown forest, and he told her the story of how her uncles had claimed the four corners of the world as their own. She remembers being entranced—not by the tale, but by the way his voice slowly climbed in excitement, his face and hands taking on a life she hadn't seen on him before. He smiled upon the conclusion of the story. She asked for another.

Hestia remembers Kronos in a way her brothers and sisters do not. It is a curse she will never share with them.

* * *

* * *

“Lovely boy,” cooed the lady nymphs.

“Handsome boy,” chuckled the dryads.

“My beautiful son,” murmured his mother, her face hidden behind the dark veil of night as she pressed soft kisses to his curls.

Zeus fell backward onto the thick green grass, the sharp scent of oncoming rain stinging his nose, and stared up at the great blue dome pressing down all around the edges of his world.

“You will be a great hero,” his mother liked to say. “You will save your brothers and sisters from the Cannibal King.”

“It was foretold,” whispered the naiads.

“It will be so,” agreed the satyrs.

Zeus closed his eyes. The silhouette of Mount Othrys stamped itself on the underside of his eyelids in permanent ink.

Her parents were Titans, but Hestia was something else. You are too beautiful, said her aunts. Your eyes aren’t right, grumbled her uncles.

Hestia still wasn’t prepared when Kronos’s confused disinterest flipped into pointed hatred.

Her throat cracked beneath the crushing grip of his hand around her neck. Golden blood spurted from her nose and mouth. She kicked her feet and clawed at his fingers and watched his jaw come unhinged in disbelieving horror. His teeth tore at her limbs as he forcibly shoved her down his gullet. Her bones broke like dried grass. She clutched her arms close to her body and sobbed as the black abyss swallowed her whole.

She remembered her mother screaming for her. She remembered tears blurring her sight of the monster she had thought to be her father.

Demeter came through shell-shocked and frozen. Perhaps it was fortunate, for she received no major wounds. Hera came through fighting. Her chest had nearly caved in from Kronos’s hold, but she had found just enough air to shriek terrible curses up to the very last moment.

Hades was seething, but he hadn’t been so unwise as to struggle. Poseidon begged, bolstered by a naivety only afforded to a newborn, and screamed when Kronos broke his spine.

Their bodies healed themselves. Hestia gathered her younger siblings close. She talked Hera down from her rages and talked Poseidon out of his breathless panic. She told stories of windblown meadows to Demeter and sat next to Hades as he brooded.

She grew accustomed to the pungent smell of decomposing food and stomach acid. She watched chunks of meat swirl around her ankles in a revolting soup of smashed berries and stinging alcohol. She imagined putting her hand on the fleshy walls and burning her way out through the meat.

One day, a crudely wrapped boulder fell into their prison.

They stared at it, and for a moment the silence was heavy. Then Poseidon started laughing, wild and unhinged.

Hera slapped his arm. Poseidon laughed harder.

“What kind of a suicidal bastard would feed him a rock,” Hades mused.

“What kind of a suicidal bastard would _succeed_ in feeding him a rock, is my question,” said Demeter.

“Poseidon,” said Hestia. “Calm yourself.”

“You’re all idiots,” groused Hera. “It’s obviously meant to look like a baby.”

There was a pause as they considered this.

“Why would a newborn need to be swaddled in a blanket?” Hades asked. “We weren’t that stupidly helpless.”

“Says the coward who didn’t fight back,” snapped Hera.

“Mother tried to hide you,” said Hestia. “You probably grew during those first few days. A newborn immediately after its birth must usually be this small.”

“You’re not the youngest anymore,” Demeter told Poseidon.

“Joy,” Poseidon gasped through his snickers.

When Zeus turned sixteen, his mother told him to change his shape into the likeness of a Titan. Then she brought him up to Mount Othrys and introduced him to the King Cannibal.

“Husband,” she said, “this young Titan wishes to serve at court as your cupbearer.”

“Lord Kronos,” said Zeus, the title tasting like ash in his mouth. “It is an honor.”

The King Cannibal trusted his wife. The young Titan was named the royal cupbearer.

Zeus played his role well. He was obedient. Kept his eyes down. Entertained the tables with copious satyr jokes and showed off the nimble dances of dryads. If he wished to be elsewhere—_the scent of oncoming rain, the soft grass of earthy fields, a depthless blue dome gently curving over his head_—he didn’t show it.

He needed to earn their trust. This meant losing to every single drinking contest ever held.

Several moons in, after one such drinking contest, sweaty hands grappled him from behind. “Cupbearer,” said Hyperion. The Titan’s breath was hot and stank of alcohol.

“Lord Hyperion,” said Zeus, deliberately rolling the name too fast off his tongue. He was getting skilled at pretending to be inebriated.

“Attend me tonight,” said Hyperion.

The Titan led him to his bedchambers. Hyperion pushed him down on the bed and gripped his hair by the roots. “You will like this,” the Titan promised.

Zeus’s head banged against the headboard multiple times. Rough nails scraped down his skin and made him want to crawl out of it. He tried his best not to resist, but it hurt, and then his body was no longer his own to control and somehow that was more unsettling.

In the morning, Hyperion grinned and asked, “You liked it, yes?”

Zeus’s body was riddled with golden bruises. He realized he was supposed to have enjoyed it, whatever that had been. He didn’t know what to say, so he nodded.

The other Titans tittered at the marks on his skin all day long. Hyperion’s laugh was booming. Zeus cracked jokes and danced like he didn’t hurt. He could feel Kronos’s eyes on him. He hated the Titan King with a newfound fury.

Several days later, Krios lumbered up to him after dinner. “Attend me,” said the Titan.

After that, it was night after night of favors. His bruises didn’t fade. He tipped his head back on the pillows and tried to enjoy it. When he closed his eyes, he saw the silhouette of Mount Othrys burned on the back of his eyelids.

He knew why he was here.

It was a long year.

But the year eventually came to its end, and on the final banquet, Zeus trickled poisons into the liquor. The Titans downed their goblets without hesitation, including the King. Bodies crumpled to the marbled floor in drug-induced slumber. Zeus watched Kronos double over and vomit out his insides in petrified triumph.

First came a boulder swaddled in tattered fabric. Second came a young man with sea-green eyes, and Zeus stumbled forward to catch his elbow as he swayed. Third was a man with sleek black hair, just like Mother’s. Fourth was a young woman who was more beautiful than anything Zeus had ever seen. Fifth came a mass of golden hair, and the woman’s shocked eyes found Zeus’s and held them. Sixth came his eldest sister, and she unfurled herself like live flames tossed into dry grass.

The King Cannibal growled, long and low, the primal sound shaking the foundations of the mountain. Zeus met his furious gaze and thought, _I’ve won_.

Then the rest of the poison kicked in, and Kronos crumpled into his own artificial sleep. Zeus turned to his siblings—it had worked, he’d done it, it had _worked_—and said, fighting to keep his voice neutral, “We need to leave.”

The incredibly beautiful woman bared her lips and smiled. “Brother,” she said in great certainty, like there was no room for arguments, like she had known what he was the moment she had laid eyes on him.

The man whose elbow Zeus was holding onto for support—Zeus had intended to support him, but somehow it felt like he was the one being held up now—started laughing, wild and uncontrolled, as if he had heard the funniest joke.

“You are, aren’t you?” the golden woman asked, never looking away from him. “Our brother?”

Zeus licked his lips. He felt lightheaded. “Yes. How . . . .” He fumbled for the right words.

It was then that Zeus noticed what was causing his lightheadedness—a deep, vibrating sense of resonance that thrummed in his center, gradually matching its irregular beats to the waves of energy discharged by these other beings. They were different, but not so different as to be _other_. They weren’t anything like the Titans. They felt like _him,_ and his body was enthusiastically aligning itself with their established harmony, had already shed its deceitful Titanic disguise and returned him to his true form. Their presence swallowed him up and cradled him in their midst. He wanted to be swept along in it, wanted to be lost.

A hand dropped onto his shoulder. He had to hold himself back from instinctively leaning into the touch.

“Thank you, little brother,” said the woman made of flames. Her hand was reassuringly solid. Zeus forgot to protest the name she gave him, lost in the sensation of acceptance.

“Should we kill Father?” the laughing man asked abruptly.

As one, they stared at the unconscious form of the King Cannibal sprawled over the flagstones.

“No,” said Zeus, hating himself as he said it. “We don’t have any weapons. It’s not a task for today.”

There was a breathless, wretched silence.

“He’s right,” the dark-haired man spoke up then, and five pairs of eyes instantly swiveled to him. “We must get off this cursed mountain while we can. Brother,” he said, addressing Zeus, “do you know of a place we can go?”

The unquestioning trust sent a foreign thrill shooting down his spine. “Yes.”

He led them back to the cave where he’d been raised. Rhea let out what might have been a guttural scream and crushed them all into one embrace. His mother’s tears soaked into his curls. She chanted their names like prayers and pressed desperate kisses on their foreheads.

Zeus closed his eyes. He thought he might shudder apart in her arms, and that would be okay, except the job wasn’t done. Not yet.

Maybe he’d stop seeing Mount Othrys on his eyelids when the King was dead.

The regurgitation process had been revolting. Hera took a few moments to regain her feet and—solid ground, _how long has it been_—when she’d shaken off her disorientation and lifted her head, there was a most beautiful young man standing in front of her, crowded on both sides by her two brothers.

He was dressed like a servant, but the aura of power hanging about him told a different story. Golden bruises mottled his olive skin. His black curls hung low, most likely to hide his eyes, but that sort of electric blue was impossible not to notice.

Her senses grew claws and yearned after him. She recognized the tugging in her stomach, the wicked hooks caught in her ribcage. “Brother,” she named him, and smiled with primal joy.

He kept glancing at them with widened eyes as he led them away from the Mountain. It was as if he couldn’t quite believe they were real.

Hera didn’t blame him. She couldn’t adjust to a world that had no visible end. Sunlight was a monstrous thing. The darkened interior of the caves felt more familiar, and Hera hated herself for it.

For one dreadful second, Hera didn’t recognize her mother. Rhea was a stranger, entirely too well-defined (clear creases, crisp curls) compared to the vague shapes that comprised the Mother in her memories. Then the Titaness was rushing forward with a piercing scream, and Zeus went limp in her hold. With a jolt, Hera _realized_—_how could I have forgotten_—and then she was dragged into Rhea’s tearful embrace as well.

Their mother wept for a long time. Hera thought Hades might be crying with her. Poseidon’s stifled chortles sounded like sobs. Demeter was definitely shedding a few tears. Hera felt the droplets hit her skin like serrated pebbles. Somewhere above her shoulder, Hestia sighed. Zeus stayed very still, as if he had turned to marble.

Hera’s own eyes were dry. Squashed between her siblings and her mother—four of them familiar, two of them near-strangers—she thought she might give anything to make this her eternity. She found no horror in the thought.

_A war_, whispered the trees.

_A war_, cried the birds.

_A war_, tittered the winds.

The world was whispering in tandem. _Kronos’s sons and daughters have declared a war._

_A war is upon us._

Hades led his siblings through the twisting underground paths, and they freed the Elder Cyclops from their chains. Sneaking in was relatively doable. But in order to make their escape, they needed to defeat the jailor, Kampê. And for that, they needed weapons.

For Hades, the Cyclops crafted the Helm of Darkness. For Poseidon, a Trident. To Zeus, they offered the Master Bolt.

“We only have material for three divine weapons,” the Cyclops said apologetically, handing out their life’s masterpieces to the three more powerful siblings. The logic of it only hurt a little. They all feared the final defeat.

Hestia declined a weapon. Her hands could hold flames, and she deemed those enough. In contrast, Hera asked for as many spears and daggers as she could carry. Demeter received a wicked Imperial Gold sword that she examined in silence.

Their first real battle was awkward and messy and bloody beyond recovery. But they were able to escape with their lives.

It was the small things.

Hestia’s legs were shattered. Zeus was unconscious, his right arm charred and oozing. Hestia had dragged him into the woods, hoping that they could hide in the bushes until Zeus woke, but the Titans’ forces had scoured the forest tirelessly. Now she was found, kneeling in a puddle of her youngest brother’s blood, by no one other than Atlas’s daughter.

_Please_, Hestia mouthed. She was exhausted.

The Titaness with almond eyes and caramel-colored braids took a step back. Faltered. Then ran. “Father!” she cried as she fled. An answering roar came back from Atlas. He was close.

Hestia felt a sinking dread close up her throat. She clutched her brother closer and listened to Atlas’s blustering charge through the foliage. She told herself she wasn’t jealous of the conviction in the girl’s voice as she had called out to her father. She tried to steel herself.

Too late, she realized a second party was rapidly approaching from behind her. She twisted around, panicked, just as the underbrush quivered—

Poseidon exploded into view and went sprinting past, spraying a trail of blood from an open wound. He heedlessly crashed through the greenery towards Atlas. Demeter strode by next, dragging the point of her golden sword through the dirt and leaving bloody footprints in her wake. Soon, Atlas’s frustrated howls were shaking the leaves off the branches.

Hera came to crouch down next to her. The left side of her face was one large bruise. “He’s alive?” she asked.

Hestia nodded numbly. “How did you find us?”

Hera blinked. “I heard you.”

Hades materialized from the shadows. His clothes were tattered and crusted over with blood. “Give him to me.”

Hestia handed Zeus over. “My legs,” she said.

Hera gathered her up in her arms. Together, the four of them fled, leaving Demeter and Poseidon to their fight.

“What happened?” Hades asked as they ran.

“His own lightning. I tried to hide us, but the woods were full of their spies.” Hestia bit her lip. “The whole world stands against us.”

“When we win, we will make them regret it,” Hera promised.

_If we can win this at all_. Hestia shoved the thought away.

A wall of crimson flames erupted in front of them, blocking their escape. Even from a distance, the explosive heat burnt their skin. Hades cursed under his breath.

Hyperion casually sauntered into view. “Hello, children.”

“Wretch,” snapped Hera.

Hyperion’s gaze lingered on Zeus’s unconscious form. “So it’s true. The lightning is killing him. What a pity.”

Hades pretended not to have flinched. Hera snarled, muscles taut in readied action.

Hyperion smiled lazily. He turned his eyes to Hestia. “My dearest niece—“

Hestia mustered up the last bits of her power and blasted his face with white-hot fire.

Eleven years passed. They learned violence from excellent teachers and grew to surpass them. Poseidon fought like a hurricane, the Trident an extension of his arm. Demeter crumpled forests in her palm with the force of her rictus will. Hera was an unforgiving blade of vengeance. Hades melted into the shadows and whispered unspoken fears into being.

Where Hestia walked, the world burned.

They found allies in former prisoners and forsaken children. They stole victory after victory by the edges of their teeth. The Titans started losing—slowly, then quickly, irreversibly, until their forces were whittled down and there were only six left—Atlas, the four cardinal Titan lords, and the King Cannibal. Finally the playing field was leveled, six against six.

On the dawn of the final battle, the siblings climbed a mountain second highest to Othrys. They planted their feet on the summit of Mount Olympus and felt the world hold its breath. _A war, a war. Kronos’s sons and daughters have declared a war._

Zeus hefted his Bolt—the gruesome weapon whose weight had threatened to destroy him, once upon a time. He gathered lightning methodically, splicing ragged streaks of silver from the roiling storm clouds, until he held a leaping, sparking white death in his hands.

His siblings took a step back. The unholy manifestation of crackling electric power took careful aim, then hurled his blinding calamity at Mount Othrys.

In one unearthly blow, the Lightning God sheared off the top half of Othrys and pulverized the Titan King’s throne. The mountain’s scream was deafening.

The sky was black, thick with roiling storm clouds and volcanic fumes, and Zeus wondered if it would still be black when the clouds were wiped clean.

Kronos lay crumpled on the ground. Two-thirds of his body was charred black. He wasn’t regenerating.

Zeus’s own hands were covered in angry boils and freshly seared scars. He sheathed the smoking Lightning Bolt on his back and took up the fallen scythe. Its leather shaft thrummed in his hands as if it sensed the touch of an enemy. The blade gleamed an unnatural pale bronze, a watered-down version of what should have been celestial.

Kronos hacked up a gobbet of blood. “Boy—“

Zeus rammed the scythe horizontally between the Titan’s teeth and ripped off the top half of his head. The ear-splitting _crunch_ of bone and tissue should have been impossible. The Lord of Time was immortal. But this was a deeply cursed blade, and it had once torn apart the Sky himself.

Gold erupted from the crudely severed edges of flesh. A ghastly fountain of glittering blood coated the blackened ground. Zeus swung the scythe again and again and again, painting over himself in the Titan’s blood.

His brothers and sisters were watching. They stood over the defeated Titans, weapons held to the enemy’s throats. Their eyes were riveted on the slaughter.

Their allies slowly approached, carrying divine chains to bind the Titans with. One by one, Hyperion, Krios, Koios, Iapetus, and Atlas were bound and made to kneel. Zeus didn’t stop hacking at the immortal body of his father. His siblings drifted closer.

They stood in a loose circle around the mass of chopped flesh. The sound was obscene and the smell of blood was overpowering, but none of them blinked. None turned away. One of Kronos’s eyeballs rolled round and round in the black sand, fixing each of them with a bottomless stare before Zeus crushed it in a squelch of gore. Thin tendrils of light trickled out of the mutilated body. The siblings inhaled the fumes, and the light became theirs.

The King Cannibal was cannibalized by his children. When Zeus finally lowered the scythe, it was hard to tell if the glow was coming from their newly enhanced auras or the metallic blood that they were now drenched in.

They understood what had to be done without having to discuss it.

“For your crimes against the world order and your crimes against your children,” said Zeus, “we sentence you to eternal damnation.”

Demeter, Poseidon, and Hades struck the ground with their weapons. Together they tore a jagged chasm in the earth, an endless fall into the deepest pits of Tartarus. Loose flames dripped from Hestia’s fingers as she set the oozing pile of flesh on fire.

“We curse your name,” said Hera, her words heavy with a promise that would outlast stars. “We curse your memory. We strike you from history and lay claim to your crown.”

“Your world is ours,” said Demeter.

“You’ve lost,” said Poseidon.

“Do not return,” said Hades.

“Goodbye, Father,” said Hestia.

Kronos fell into the pit like a shower of dead stars.

* * *

Hestia was twenty-one when she was rescued from her father’s stomach. _He is a child_, she thought, staring at Zeus. _They are so young_, she thought, looking around at her siblings, watching them fall and crumble and build themselves back up into living cataclysms.

_She is a child_, Hestia thought, staring down at Calypso’s shaking back. The young Titaness had prostrated herself before her ruling lieges. She awaited judgment.

Hestia remembered the slack-jawed emptiness in Zeus that had terrified her. She remembered the new scars on Poseidon and Demeter, remembered Hera’s scream and Hades’s stifled gasp of pain. When she thought of the amount of blood spilled on that day, her core grew so hot she felt cold with the hatred.

“Banishment,” said Hestia, before any of her siblings could condemn the girl. “Her only crime was cowardice. Let her hide from the world for eternity.”

Demeter frowned. Hera seethed. But none of them had been there when Hestia had despaired. This was not their judgment to pass.

Zeus nodded. “Banishment,” he said, and it was done.

The girl was young. _This is all I will give you_, Hestia thought, remembering shattered limbs and her brother’s blood pooling around her. _I owe you no more mercy_.

Demeter was twenty when she breathed fresh air again. As soon as she remembered that she was a living thing, she had to fight for that life with everything she had.

She did so gladly. Retribution came easily to her. She rejoiced in the ability to feel the world on the soles of her bare feet. It helped anchor her.

On the day of their coronation, her sisters chose to preside over hearth and family. Demeter chose life. She claimed the earth, the entire boundless mass of it. Her brothers nodded in deference, and she walked up to the dais in bare feet to ascend her throne.

When she breathed, the world breathed with her. She felt as solid as the mountain she stood upon.

Hera was nineteen when she crawled out of the monster’s maw. During the first months of the war, she followed Rhea around the globe. Mother was doing her best to persuade as many Titans to stay out of the war as possible. Hera did her best to ask the world for help. “This is injustice,” she argued—to the plants, the creatures, the spirits submerged in ponds and the nymphs floating on gales. “Kronos is no true king,” she said. “He cannot be allowed to rule. Help us.”

None answered her plea. So Hera took up her spears and daggers and turned her back on the world. _Fine_, she thought, fuming, _we’ll do it ourselves_.

When she finally placed a crown on her head, her back remained turned on the world. Acidic vindictiveness colored her triumph. _Now here is an epic of ironies_, she thought.

_Scream all you want. I am ready to hear you suffer._

Hades was eighteen when he first learned how to bite back his fears, but it never grew easy. After the victory, there must have been a reason—when they drew straws to divide the world, and Poseidon looked like he had been saved and Zeus looked like he might smile—there must have been a reason he didn’t contest the draw. Must have been something that made him say, yes, I will take the underground.

He held the keys to the prisons incarcerating their most hated enemies—himself acting as jailor, judge, and executioner—and only then did he realize how utterly satisfying it was to have the proof of his safety be himself.

Poseidon was seventeen when—after a lifetime of confinement in the suffocating darkness of his father’s disgusting stomach—he received his Trident. He embarked on the war slightly crazed and considerably scared. He ended the war entirely too crazed.

The sea swallowed him up and he devoured it back. The white-capped waves and salty shores became his lungs, his heart. Fault lines and volcanoes ran on the heat of his blood and the force of his temper. The ocean’s depths were never dark, not in a way that he feared. He raced with his passions and raged as a storm. He laughed at the world that knew to fear him.

Learning kindness came later. Much, much later.

Zeus was sixteen on the verge of seventeen when he took up the Lightning Bolt. He had set out on a mission to free his siblings from his father (no, not a father, it was his _nemesis_, a monster only he could destroy) and he did not hesitate to use whatever means he deemed necessary to carve out a victory for them.

His siblings crowned him as king. One responsibility fell away, replaced by another. He felt its weight keenly.

He wished he could stop seeing Mount Othrys in his dreams.

* * *

When you fight a war for eleven years, starting at the very height of your youth—sixteen, nineteen, twenty-one—and no one is there to help, there’s no higher power to call upon, it’s just you and your siblings and this unending fight that bleeds you dry of everything else except _survive, survive, survive_—

When you win, bloody prices and bloody victories, stolen thrones claimed by force, and they crown you—the world bows down and whispers, _my lord, my lady, my king, my queen, my _god—

No one taught you how to put your sword down. No one taught you what safety was, no one showed you how to take comfort in kindness. No one was there, there was only ever you and your siblings and now the entire world is spread out below your feet.

When all you’ve known is horrors, and no one ever protected you from them—it was always you, you against the world, the final barrier between imminent destruction and your next breath of desperate existence—

What is to prevent you from becoming a horror yourself?

* * *

* * *

“Just our luck,” Hera grumbled. “We are stuck in that putrid stomach years longer than those idiots, and yet _they_ get to wield more power because they are _younger_. What kind of deal is this?”

“We are rulers already,” said Demeter. “The world is ours.”

Hera gripped her skirts. “Well, I wanted more of it.”

So she got herself more. She married the king of the gods and became Queen. The world was hers. Zeus was hers. It was perfect, a flawless conclusion, a promised happy ending. She was practically glowing in pleasure, rivaling the stars with her radiance.

The satisfaction didn’t last long. One moment Zeus was kissing her like he was ecstatic to have sworn his eternity to her, and the next he was drifting away, dipping into liquor barrels and chasing the company of mortal women. He ceased listening to her counsel. He retreated into long brooding silences, punctuated by aggressive bouts of indulgence.

Hera didn’t understand. This was meant to be her victory. She tried to reason with him, tried teasing him, whispering intimacies in his ear, tucking pretty feathers in his hair. She tried to remind him he loved her—_he had sworn he would, he had spoken the vows_—but he just shrugged her off.

At length, she decided more drastic measures were necessary. “We must talk some sense into Zeus,” she told Poseidon.

Poseidon laughed wildly at her suggested plan, but he agreed to help her. Hera recruited Athena and Apollo as well, and together they trapped Zeus in a golden net of chains so he would have no choice but to listen. But Thetis and Briares freed him, and the king’s subsequent rage was incandescent. He struck Poseidon and Apollo down from Olympus, then bound her above the Void of Chaos to punish her. When Hephaestus freed her, he flung his son down the mountain.

Like a clap of thunder, Hera realized she had made the exact same mistake as Rhea. She had naively assumed her husband would be a loving one. She had put her trust in an uncontrollable man, and she had paid for it.

He had made her afraid.

_No_, she thought with vitriolic fury, _no you don’t_. She had spat curses into Kronos’s face as he had unhinged his jaw. She was no coward. The Titans had not managed to cow her. She would not be cowed by her husband.

She concocted the most poisonous curses and bestowed them on his demigod children. _Here is what I think of your legacy_. She arranged the most painful deaths for his mortal lovers. _Here is what I think of your infidelity_. When he came to her in a rage, she pushed him into a wall and tore at his lips with her teeth. _You do not scare me_, she thought, high on adrenaline and victory.

“Do I scare you?” she asked, giddy with the power she had discovered for herself.

He growled in response and kissed her like he despised her.

_You’re mine_, she thought fiercely, tangling her fingers in his and biting down on his tongue.

Maybe she was not meant for happiness. But there were more ways than one to possess a heart.

Poseidon's divinity was stripped from him in punishment for his rebellion. He was struck down from Olympus and ordered to build a great wall for the king of Troy.

A slave girl brought him food three times a day. She was a wisp of a thing, but her stories could fill libraries. She spoke of imaginary heroes and dangerous quests with a wild fervor that bordered on desperation. Poseidon learned to share his watered wine with her, because she was a wisp of a girl and he feared she would allow her feet to carry her to a rooftop she could jump from.

The Trojan king executed her for treason. “No fraternizing with the Unnamed One,” was the decree. Poseidon wondered if this was her jump, and he felt foolish for not seeing it sooner.

The vast majority of humans called him the Unnamed One. There were only three memorable exceptions.

The first exception was the round woman in the kitchens. After the slave girl’s execution, he had to walk to the kitchens for meals. The woman brought him sweet buns fresh out of the oven and clucked over his dirt-stained tunic. She snuck him a new pair of sandals and an extra cup of broth. She called him Sailor because he’d told her he came from across the sea.

The second exception was a soldier whose brother had been lost at sea. The soldier laid a trap by slitting the throat of the round woman in the kitchens and silently waiting in her place. The soldier called him Poseidon, and he had a curse on his lips as he died, his chest caved in from a single divine strike. Poseidon thought the soldier’s hatred was familiar, then realized he must have been wearing that same expression as Father swallowed him whole.

The third exception had been the slave girl. She had called him Friend.

He didn’t know their names. He hadn’t thought to ask. They hadn’t offered.

When his godly strength was finally returned to him, he was angry.

“You betrayed me,” Zeus said. He was frowning like he didn’t understand why Poseidon was angry. “I have shown you mercy.”

“You are not my master,” Poseidon said. The hairs on his arm were rising, _imminent storm, turn your ships back to shore or you will die_.

Zeus narrowed his eyes. “I am king.”

Poseidon stepped closer. “If you dare to steal my strength again,” he growled, “you had better strike me down while I am still mortal.”

Poseidon didn’t return to Olympus for a long time. His rage numbered in days and weeks and months. The sea boiled and frothed and sunk every vessel flying Trojan colors. A great serpent was sent to remind the Trojan king of just whom he had insulted.

Nectar tasted like watered wine. Ambrosia tasted like sweet buns fresh out of the oven. He stirred seas and shook mountains. He called forth horrifying disasters to prove his divinity. He killed thousands of humans. They screamed his name in curses as they died.

Nothing felt right.

Hera came to find him, a year into his self-imposed exile. “It’s the Summer Solstice,” she said. “Come back.”

“I’m not ready,” he told her.

“He’s sorry.”

“Is he?”

Hera shrugged. Her smile held poison. “I killed three of his mortal lovers this week. He’s glum. That is the best we can expect of him, I think.”

Poseidon shook his head. “I’m not ready.”

Hera bit her lip. She went.

He stayed.

Demeter had companions—lovers, friends, children—but they never stayed. She wandered the earth alone, and she told herself that was acceptable.

Then Persephone said, “You are the best.” Persephone said, “I love you, Mother,” her earnest eyes shining bright, and Demeter hugged the girl close with no intention of letting go.

Hades fell in love quietly, like ashes settling over a burnt-out battlefield. “She is incredible,” he said, on his rare visit to Olympus.

Zeus nodded like he understood. “I can give you a moment alone with her.”

So Hades drove a chariot aboveground and held out a hand to Persephone. He said, “I can show you beauty you have not seen before.”

He took Spring to his palace of shadows, and there Persephone marveled at the obsidian pillars and jeweled flowers.

Time flowed strangely in the Underworld. Hades asked her to walk the gardens with him. Persephone asked him to dance with her. They spun through the dark caverns like there was a blue sky above their heads. The rocks might as well have been painted with stars.

“I will never forgive you,” Demeter screamed at the earth, because Hades was not there and the earth was used to hearing cries of sorrow in the wake of the departed. The goddess swept her cloak over the farmlands and harvested death as she would apples and grain. She fought against Hades in the only way she could. Hades gave no answer.

“How dare you,” she screamed at Zeus, in the palace of open ceilings and white pillars.

The king frowned, uncomprehending. “Our brother is in love,” he said, as if that was an explanation.

“She is my daughter,” she said, painful words wrenched out of her chest, “she is _mine_.”

Zeus stared at her, confusion etched in his furrowed brows. “Hades will not harm her,” he said. His quizzical look was accusing: _what makes this child so special that you finally claim an offspring as your own?_

Demeter squashed down her sobs. He didn’t understand, this was _different_. Persephone was precious. Persephone loved her best.

It took a hundred thousand deaths before Hades relented.

“What is this?” Persephone asked.

Hades was unable to lie to her. “A fruit of the Underworld.”

Persephone examined the pomegranate, turning it over in her hands. Several ruby-red seeds tumbled to the ground, glittering in the dark. “What will it cost me?”

Hades licked his lips. “You will be bound to my realm. You will have to spend a portion of each year with me, here.”

Persephone stared at him.

“You don’t have to,” said Hades, a horrid ache pulsing in his chest. “You can leave and not return.”

Persephone wrenched a handful of seeds off the fruit and, as he watched in startled awe, swallowed the cluster of glimmering red lights without hesitation.

At last, Demeter’s daughter was returned to her, and the goddess threw her arms around her lovely girl of spring, _my child, you’ve returned—!_

Then Persephone said, “I love him, Mother.”

Demeter was alone again.

_Fine_, she thought. The earth had given out beneath her feet and she was a dried-out husk of false bones and skin. She wouldn’t let herself fall any further. _I can be alone_.

Hestia didn't notice much, during the first several centuries of her rule. She let Time sweep her into its embrace. She existed, yet she was barely there.

She didn’t notice humans until Pandora unleashed Death upon the world.

_Ah_, Hestia noted, _the humans have lost their permanence_.

Originally, she went to offer Pandora some comfort. But she stayed too long, entranced by what the mortals had made of finite time.

“Your throne lies neglected,” said Zeus, by way of messengers.

“Let it,” said Hestia, distracted.

Years passed. Zeus asked her to step down from her throne.

After a long, quiet period of contemplation, she acquiesced.

Hestia learned kindness slowly, parsing the theories and watching it practiced. She reveled in the new skill. When she thought herself relatively proficient with the theory, she looked up and belatedly noticed what had been destroyed during her spell of irresponsible apathy. So she sought out her brothers and sisters.

On cloudy days, she visited Poseidon. "Just because the sun is not visible doesn't mean it is gone," she said.

Poseidon shrugged. “Why are you here?”

“I want to keep you company."

Poseidon would say, “I am going to sink ten fleets,” or “I am going to erupt Vesuvius,” or “I want to see this country drown.”

Hestia would say, “All right,” and she would keep him company as he wrought disasters upon the land.

On sunny days, she visited Hades. “It’s summer,” she said. “Daybreak comes on the heels of nightfall. Even in the shade, the heat is incredible.”

In his cool palace of black spires, Hades said, “I don’t care much for summer.”

“I know,” she would answer, and she would stay for dinner so he didn’t have to eat alone.

On rainy days, Hestia visited Hera. “What troubles you?” she asked, leaning on the marble balcony of the Queen’s palace.

“I have no troubles,” Hera said, grinding her teeth.

“Well,” Hestia said, “the skies are crying for you, so it can’t be nothing.”

Hera huffed. “The skies don’t cry for me.”

“I think the world would cry for us, if we asked it to.”

“For you,” Hera corrected. “They would cry for you.”

“I would cry for your sorrows, Sister.” Hestia would smooth the hair away from Hera’s face. “Tell me.”

Hera always told.

On snowy days, Hestia visited Demeter. “It is cold,” she said. “Come inside. Sit by the fire.”

Demeter shook her head, standing barefoot in the freezing snow. “I can’t forget,” the goddess of the seasons said. “So I won't let the world forget.”

“The best hearths are ones lit in winter. The snow will not melt in your absence.” Hestia would hold out her hand. “I brought sweet buns.”

“Sweet buns are not healthy,” Demeter would say absently, but she always took her hand.

Hestia taught them hope. She offered comfort. She helped spool out their fears into quiet little moments by the hearth. She showed them it didn’t have to be bad days and worse days. Sometimes it could be better days.

Hestia did not visit Zeus, because she had no throne on the Council and that stung. He didn’t seem to notice.

The first and last tribute of every mortal meal belonged to her. To her name were paid the foremost honors, and to her hearths were made the most honest sacrifices. She had no throne, but she still wore her crown. She had no intention of abdicating.

Zeus was king.

It was peculiar to claim the seat he had hated from afar.

He realized very quickly that he was incapable of making the right choices. When he acted too fast, his rashness cost him. When he acted too slow, his ignorance clawed at him. He wanted to flee from the decisions, but the job wasn’t done. It was never going to be done.

He felt like he was sinking into a swamp. Even Hera’s presence began to grate on him. He wanted her, but the hard edges of her invulnerable immortality reminded him of hands in his hair and bruises on his thighs. He shied away from her touch and declined the dances she proposed.

He drugged himself with liquor and fancied he could have won those drinking competitions on Othrys, if he’d let himself. He descended to the mortal plane and waded into human kingdoms in a purposeless search for an anesthetic that didn’t exist. He sought out sexual companionship like there was something to be proven wrong. Mortal women were soft, and to his relief, he discovered he really did like this. Perhaps the problem he’d had on Othrys had been with the burliness of the male body.

Then Hera and Poseidon betrayed him, and the treachery struck him so deeply he experienced pain he hadn’t felt with physical wounds. _How dare you cast me aside_, he seethed. _Do you not see the sacrifices I have made? Do you not remember what I did for you? How can you forsake me when I have only ever been loyal?_

Like a strike of lightning, Zeus realized he had made the same mistake as his timeless nemesis. He had blindly trusted in his brothers and sisters, foolishly believing that familial ties meant unquestioned devotion, and he had paid for it.

_No_, he thought. _I will not meet a defeat like Kronos’s_.

He was king. He was justice. _Trust is for fools_, he reminded himself. They would learn not to move against him.

Poseidon refused to look at him. Demeter screamed at his face. Hades frowned in disapproval. Hestia never visited. Zeus’s choices continued to be wrong, but he had sunk too deep into the swamp to try to get out.

Hera came ablaze in white-hot fury. She slaughtered his lovers and children, and when he went to her in anger, she pressed him back and tore at his lips in frenzied passion.

“Do I scare you?” she gasped, keeping his hands caged in hers, and Zeus recognized the crazed light in her eyes as possessiveness.

He kissed her back, deliberately losing himself in the violence of it.

* * *

They are prideful. They are obstinate. They take great pains to squash down resistance, and they glare at the upstart youths who demand to stand on equal ground with elder gods.

It’s a reflex, almost. _I survived what you could never imagine_, is the reasoning. Disrespect feels too much like a reminder; _remember, remember this isn’t permanent, there will always be threats, one day you will return from whence you came and the Titans will laugh at your downfall._

They are selfish and cruel and sometimes downright evil. _I will have respect_, scream the desperate children who were never afforded much, and they are children still, even after millennia.

The fault is theirs for refusing to grow, for embracing savagery. But the fault is not entirely theirs, as is the way of an unjust world that thrills in the slaughter of children. This has been true before. This will be true for a long time after.

Most would call them villains, and they would be right to do so.

* * *

* * *

“I will not forget this,” Hades screamed at the sky, because Zeus was not there and the sky was used to hearing curses meant for untouchable targets. He held onto Maria di Angelo’s corpse and trembled in helpless rage. Had Death always been this cruel?

Demeter heard the ground screaming through the soles of her feet. She invested in a pair of sturdy boots.

“Something powerful and evil is stirring down there,” said Percy, twelve years old and offering up the Lightning Bolt. “Something even older than the gods.”

Poseidon instinctively turned to look at Zeus. His brother’s frown was thunderous.

“_You don’t think_,” Poseidon started, speaking in the ancient tongue.

“_No_,” Zeus cut in. “_The Pit is inescapable_.”

“_Yet monsters drag themselves out of it, every time they are killed.”_

_“I destroyed him,”_ said Zeus.

_“Yes, I know.”_

_“You saw.”_

_“We did. But consider, our Father was only second to you. If there was a way out of his prison, he may have managed to find it.”_

Zeus’s jaw went stiff with tension. _“You still fear him.”_

Poseidon gritted his teeth. _“You don’t?”_

_“He was never my father.”_

_“Brother.”_

_“Enough.”_ Zeus held up a hand. “We will speak of this no more.” Then he turned to Percy and gruffly expressed his thanks by sparing the child's life.

“I do not trust you, Perseus Jackson,” said Zeus. “I do not like what your arrival means for the future of Olympus. But for the sake of peace in the family, I shall let you live.”

The king of the gods made his usual flashy exit, and Poseidon was left alone with his son.

The Great Prophecy warned of an evil with the power to raze Olympus. The Great Prophecy also warned of a half-blood of the most powerful gods. The di Angelo children had perished. Thalia Grace was as good as dead. Percy was the only child left who fit the bill.

“Your mother is a queen among women,” Poseidon said, remembering Montauk and its fragile tranquility. “I am sorry you were born,” Poseidon said, thinking of dead children and ravaged golden bodies.

The child called him Father.

“You did well,” Poseidon told his son, feeling a hard, spiky lump settle in his chest.

Zeus must have told, because Hera came to find him an hour later.

“We must kill him,” she said, eyes bright with feverish certainty.

“Father can’t be killed,” Poseidon said, turning his face away from her.

“Poseidon, your child cannot be allowed to live. You understand, don’t you? If the Great Prophecy is foretelling His return, we cannot risk it.” She was very nearly pleading. “You know what must be done. We must protect Olympus. We must preserve our family.”

“Hera.” The spiky lump in his chest was growing in size. “Percy is my child.”

Hera shivered as if it was taking all of her willpower to hold herself together. “He is a threat.”

“I do not want to be Father,” Poseidon admitted, and Hera bit her lip white.

“We are not done talking about this,” she hissed. “I will go inform Demeter. You will speak to Hestia.”

It was a cloudy day. Hera went. Poseidon waited for Hestia’s customary visit.

“Have you heard?” said Hera, and Demeter felt ice crawl into her dried-out cracks.

“I need to tell you something,” said Poseidon, and Hestia learned what it was like to have a forgotten terror reinvent itself.

“Is it true?” asked Demeter, and Zeus didn’t have an answer he was willing to speak out loud.

“Did you hear?” asked Hestia, and Hades paused in his paperwork to rein back the tremors running through his hands.

A year and a half later, four of them sat in their thrones for the Winter Solstice and listened to Artemis speak angrily about the return of the Titan King. They did not look at each other. Zeus decreed action.

It had been decades since Hades made his annual visit to Olympus on the Winter Solstice. He sat motionless beside an obsidian fireplace. Hestia listened silently in the Council’s hearth and relayed the words back to him through the flickering flames.

“We do not have to fight in this war,” said Hades, on the cusp of the Second Titan War.

“Do you hear yourself?” Demeter asked tiredly.

“This is no longer our fight,” he argued. “Our brothers and sisters are not alone. They can manage. Come underground. Wait it out with your daughter.”

“Whom you stole.” Demeter studied his face. “You know what that’s like, now.”

Hades pursed his lips. “I did not kill Persephone.”

“And yet I still lost her.”

“Then I will offer you a chance to regain her.” Hades held out a hand. “Come underground.”

Demeter’s mouth twisted.

Olympus was overflowing with eager young gods and their insignificant quarrels. They engaged in petty conflicts for the sake of delicate hierarchies. Demeter had no taste for it.

The skies were not covered in black storm clouds. This was no desperate struggle against an unbeatable foe. Because she did not carry her sword openly, too many upstart youths thought her a harmless goddess. They had changed, and so had their father.

“Fine,” she said. Perhaps this was no longer her fight. Perhaps it was time to step back.

Of course, then Hades was persuaded back into the war by his obnoxiously determined son.

“I thought you said this was no longer our fight,” said Demeter.

“Are you coming or not?” Hades grumbled.

Demeter harrumphed. She shoved past him to get on the chariot first.

The Second Titan War was not their story. It was the story of demigods in love, children who laughed and fought and screamed at each other with the weight of millennia settled on their backs like rotting cloaks.

The weight of millennia was an ugly thing.

She would never speak of this, but when Demeter saw Kronos turn away from her and retreat into the Empire State Building—when it became clear this fight was not her responsibility, not anymore—a part of her was relieved. She waited for the verdict to fall, _Olympus to preserve or raze_, and she killed a winding path through the Titan King’s abandoned armies as though it was to be her last harvest.

He would never admit this, but Hades realized too late that he’d wanted very badly to land a strike against Kronos by his own hand. He threw himself against the invisible wall barring him from his father. A guttural scream of frustration was wrenched from him. It was all Kronos’s fault—the ruinous world, the festering rage that needed direction, the blasted Great Prophecy that warned against children. It was Kronos’s fault, he had destroyed them, and he had the nerve to come back and mock them for their inevitable ruination, how _dare he_.

But this was no longer their fight.

Hera forced her attention on Typhon so she would not have to think about Who was hacking apart her throne on Olympus. Poseidon felt His timeless gaze as he drove Typhon back into the abyss, and he hardened his grip on his Trident so he wouldn’t be seen shaking.

Hestia kept her eyes open through the familiar smoke of burning flesh and watched the tragedy unfold, from beginning to end.

Zeus felt it, the moment his ancient enemy came apart into trillions of particles that would take a long, long time to reassemble. He was five thousand years old going on six, and all he could manage was weariness.

* * *

Keeping a hold on a tenuous reality is a difficult task, especially in a world teeming with temporary things. So you hold on to what you’re certain of.

Kronos’s death is a certainty. It is a haunting scene of gore and exaltation, etched into memory’s walls in deep, scarring grooves. Everything else pales in contrast. Nothing is more real than that moment: a brutal carnage on the edge of daybreak, brothers and sisters standing solemn witness.

Maybe it was inevitable. What could be more real than a bloody dethroning? Who else could be real apart from your siblings? They were there—they fought for you, bled for you, ripped lightning from the heavens and struck chasms into the earth.

The world might as well be a weightless dream, without them.

* * *

You are all I have, thought Zeus. I can’t lose you.

I need to preserve this. I need to keep things exactly the way they are.

If I could make this permanent, I would turn us all to marble.

This is all I have, thought Hera, derisive and spiteful. This is all I have, yet I cannot protect this.

If I bind us in tighter strings and call us family, could I keep this from falling apart?

If I made this perfect, could this become permanent?

At least we’re still here, thought Poseidon, laughter bubbling up his throat. At least we didn’t lose. I don’t know what I’m doing, nothing makes sense, but at least there’s still this.

It was hollow reassurance, but it was better than the dark. 

I am alone, Demeter thought, and that is fine. But while her lovers and friends and children never stayed, her brothers and sisters remained in place like a particularly sticky curse.

She sneered at their stationary nature and used them as her own North Star.

I am no Olympian, Hades thought bitterly. I do not belong.

And yet he was drawn into his siblings’ orbit, again and again. It was as if they were celestial bodies caught in each other’s destructive gravity—eternally tearing at each other, refusing to move away.

Fools, the lot of them.

This is what I have, Hestia thought, silent and exhausted. This is what I have, she thought, with newfound hope. I have learned kindness. I can give that to them.

They are what I have. Maybe I can teach them to be better.

* * *

* * *

Zeus carefully lay down in the grass, making sure his head was pointed to the east. He lifted his chin and tilted his head back, just a little, so that Mount Othrys in the west would slip below his line of sight and his eyes would be entirely filled with the magnificent blue sky. He was fifteen on the verge of sixteen, and he felt ready.

Tomorrow he might close his eyes and trace the King Cannibal’s palace etched on the backs of his eyelids. Tomorrow he might feel an immovable weight crushing his chest and pushing down his shoulders.

But today he held up a hand to shield his eyes from the southern sun and kept looking up, tracing clouds and chasing falcons. He pictured leading his brothers and sisters back out into the sunlight. He imagined lying down in the grass and having his siblings sit beside him. He was unable to visualize their faces, their height, the way their hands might move when they spoke. But if he succeeded—_when_, not _if _(it was foretold, he could do this, he _would_)—maybe he could learn.

He stared up at the bottomless blue sky and dared to dream of freedom.

**Author's Note:**

> _Just for a minute_   
_The silver forked sky_   
_Lit you up like a star_   
_That I will follow_
> 
> _Now it's found us_   
_Like I have found you_   
_I don't want to run_   
_Just overwhelm me_
> 
> [My Playlist for Greek Gods](https://californiannostalgia.tumblr.com/post/188178354918/and-the-grace-of-gods-im-pretty-sure-is-a-grace)


End file.
